Vernon, Texas
April 23, 2009
Back-to-back freezes damaged wheat
across many of the wheat-producing regions of Texas. While some
fields will still yield grain, major damage was done to future
seed availability.
When the freezes occurred on March 28-29 and April 5-6, much of
the wheat crop across the state was at susceptible-growth stages
to be injured by freezing temperatures, said Dr. Gaylon Morgan,
Texas AgriLife
Extension Service wheat specialist in College Station.
Dr. Brent Bean, AgriLife Extension agronomist from Amarillo,
said about a third of the state’s crop grown north of Amarillo
is still expected to have good production.
“Really the only bright spot is the wheat north of Amarillo,”
Bean said. “We’re not going to have record yields, but we are
going to make a crop.”
He said wheat south of Amarillo and into the South Plains region
has mixed prospects, due to drought damage that preceded the
freeze damage. It finished off most dryland fields, while
irrigated fields are showing damage but will still make some
grain.
Todd Baughman, AgriLife Extension agronomist at Vernon, said
basically all wheat from Wellington to Abilene suffered some
kind of damage, either from the drought or the two freezes.
“A lot of the wheat fields north along the Red River back toward
Burkburnett suffered 75 to 100 percent loss,” Baughman said.
“Overall, we basically took a bad crop and made it worse,” he
said.
But the hardest hit might be to the wheat-seed production system
due to freeze damage suffered at the Texas Foundation Seed
Service south of Vernon.
“This freeze damage could have an impact throughout the system,
from the research programs to the producers,” said Steve Brown,
director of Foundation Seed. “We have experimental lines that
are frozen out, and it will take two years to get back where we
were with them.”
Foundation Seed does have other production locations, but “we
won’t harvest anything locally here due to the freeze damage,”
Brown said.
When wheat breeders are ready to introduce a new variety, they
send it to Foundation Seed, where it goes through the
certification program. Brown said there are four recognized
classes of certified seed: breeder seed, foundation seed,
registered seed and certified seed.
Breeders provide Brown with about 150 pounds of seed on
experimental lines of wheat, which he plants to produce about
150 bushels of wheat the following year. That wheat seed is
planted and will produce about 7,500 bushels the next year.
“When we roll out a new variety, we try to hit that 7,000 to
10,000 bushels of seed availability, so it can be released at
all levels,” Brown said.
“We have several hundred acres of wheat in various stages of
production here, and every variety and experimental line was a
total loss, due to the freeze,” he said. “We had breeder seed
increases going along with our foundation production for five or
six varieties. The cold weather sterilized the plant, so it will
never make a grain.”
Brown said some wheat varieties showed classic symptoms of
freeze damage with a white head, while others looked healthy.
“But when you start digging into the head, it has sterilized it
and there will be little to no grain production,” he said. “Some
heads have no grain and others have a few grains in the head,
but the tips of the grain are damaged and show abnormal
maturity.”
Morgan said based on observations, late freezes will affect seed
quality in Central Texas, the Blacklands, northeast Texas and
the Rolling Plains. At the growth stages the wheat was in, and
with temperatures that dropped below 30 degrees for an extended
time, the flowers may have been sterilized or seed development
may have seized.
If the flower was sterilized, no seeds will be developed, Morgan
said. However, if the wheat plant was in the seed-development
stage, much of the seed will be very small and shriveled, and
will not likely germinate.
“So, special precautions should be considered this year before
saving seed for planting and purchasing seed,” he said.
Baughman said many of the damaged fields in the Rolling Plains
have turned white now, so producers can tell where that damage
is, and they may already have an insurance designation from the
impending drought. However, some fields will have to be held
until harvest, or producers will be required to leave strips for
insurance purposes.
“Some of the fields are being laid down for hay, and some of
them will have some cattle turned out into them,” he said. “We
also have some producers who will replace the wheat with hay
grazer, milo, cotton or possibly sesame, but the larger portion
will be laid out for wheat next year.”
Crop-damaging spring freezes don’t come along too often,
Baughman said, but there have been two in the past 12 years.The
difference, he said, is the wheat crop in 1997 was shaping up to
be a really big crop.
“The freeze timing this year was close, but the crop wasn’t
shaping up to be anything like the 40-plus (bushels per acre)
dryland wheat crop that was shaping up that year.”
Before the 1997 freeze, Baughman said long-time producers told
him the last time they had had a freeze that late was in 1938. |
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